Khurshid compares India with Muhammad Ali

New Delhi: Known for metaphors to describe complex situations, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Thursday compared India with legendary boxer Muhammad Ali who tired his adversaries and then with a single left hook, floored them.
Maintaining that India has the history that if someone wants to take a few blows at it, the country will be able to withstand them, he said, "All we should know is how to protect the face, how to protect the muscle that we would need to strike back."

"I think in South Asia we see ourselves (India) as a little bit like Ali of those days which should be. We should know that we have the strength, we have the stamina, we have the bulk, that we have the presence, the reputation and we have the history that if someone wants to take a few blows at us we will be able to withstand them," said Khurshid.

He was addressing the inaugural session of an `International Conference on Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation in South Asia: Trends, Challenges and Prospects`.
"We can`t go into a battle with everybody, we can go into battle of wits, we can go into battle of offering something better and greater and expect this. When I went to Africa I had said this, we have special charms and we have special abilities and this is true about all of South Asia.

"We have special charms and special abilities that we somehow seem to overlook when we continue to worry about competition of different nature. Competition is good and we should have competition," said Khurshid.